Least Expected
by RatherAbysmal
Summary: AU. Ninjas don't always come home. Team Seven angst.


Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. It's fanfiction.

A/N: I was bored and this kind of happened. One-shot maybe.

* * *

Naruto stared hard at the floor, nails digging painfully into the calloused skin of his palms as he shook with the onslaught of unnamed emotions. "No."

Sarutobi diverted his attention from Kurenai's report to glance at the speaker. He had allowed the presence of Team Seven, despite knowing how ill-received the news would be, rather than to let them hear from the mouth of a stranger. Kakashi and Sai hung in the back, the Jounin with his eye downcast, the latter blank-faced in his complicit neutrality.

"Sakura-chan can't be... " Naruto groused. His whiskers had darken and his head was unnaturally bowed, the apex of his chin straining for the junction between his collarbone, body taut and ready to spring. His young self was maladroit with the more than familiar feelings of losing a teammate, a friend. And now a first-love.

A barely audible sniffle came from Hinata.

"She's not—she can't—you didn't look hard enough! We have to go look again!"

"We did the best we could regarding the circumstances," Kurenai spoke, eyes fixed on the Hokage, "We combed the area multiple times, followed the main river downstream, checked the local villages—there's so sign of Haruno Sakura."

Naruto rounded on her, eyes blazing and teeth bared. "So you looked everywhere?! Considered every possible scenario?!"

She met his gaze head on. "No."

She turned back to the man behind the desk. "The river breaks off at numerous points as it flows. She could end up anywhere from the Land of Fire to the Land of Lightning to the Land of Water. It would require a substantial amount of manpower to conduct a thorough search, of therein, no results may be yielded."

Naruto stared defiantly up at her, ready to refute but Kurenai was not finished.

"I'm really sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I have reason to doubt that Haruno survived the fall. It's a long way down and if you consider the amount of falling debris and her range of abilities and skills..."

The boy flinched, remembering the crater left on the side of the canyon from the attack.

"You sent us because of our abilities as a tracking team." She swallowed and bowed her head. "I am sorry that we failed. I am sorry that her loved ones will not be able to give her a proper burial."

She passed a remorseful eye over the the forms of her 13 and 14 year old students. Shino had taken on a wide and stalwart stance, his shoulders stiff and head ducked into the retreat of his high-collared jacket. Beside him, Hinata wept silently, hands wrangling each other in distress and Kiba stood with his arms crossed, somber and still, Akamaru quiet by his feet.

Students who have shared the same years and the same friends as Haruno Sakura.

They had searched and searched until they could barely stand on their feet but rest could only do so much when they were constrained to a week's worth of time. Hinata herself had cried the entire trip back and Kiba had been unusually silent. Shino had always been good at hiding his emotions but she suspected he took it the hardest. From what she knew, he and Sakura had been former study buddies back at the Academy.

"I'm sorry, man," Kiba said quietly. He placed a hand on Naruto's shoulder but the boy shook him away.

"Not sorry enough!"

"Na-Naruto," Hinata whimpered. "Sakura was our friend too... "

At her voice, he reeled back but didn't apologize. "Old man, please let me go one more time! I made a promise to her and I'm not going to leave her behind!"

"Naruto, one of our best tracking teams couldn't even find her. We just don't have the resources to conduct a fool-proof search."

The boy barreled on. "If you can't spare anyone else, let me go! I have tons of chakra, I'll search day and night!"

"You know I can't let you wander from the village whenever you want, especially unsupervised."

"Old man! This is my teammate!"

"She is also a ninja! We all understand what it means to put ours lives on the line, to make sacrifices!"

"Sacrifices?! You're going to have to give me a better reason than that! I'm not going to go back on my word so whatever game you're playing, you can quit it!"

"Naruto, you are completely out of line. You cannot justify the—"

"I'll take him."

All eyes turned to Kakashi.

"Just me and him. By the time we come back, Sai would have made his full recovery and Team Seven will be back on track."

Sarutobi studied him with a critical eye. "Kakashi..."

"Hokage-sama, he needs this." There was no slouch in his posture, a rather discerning backdrop against his proclivity for nonchalance.

The old man sighed, steepling his fingers in thought. This was quickly unraveling out of his hands. Denying Naruto's stubborn request would only cause a riff in their relationship; the kid was not known for his adherence to orders or average day to day reasoning. No, what he had was a lot of heart and an unmatched fighting spirit. He hadn't given up on Uchiha Sasuke yet and he wouldn't give up on Haruno Sakura. At least with Kakashi keeping an eye on him...

"Alright," he conceded after a moment. "One week. One week and no more."

_No more talk of searches. No more what-ifs. Haruno Sakura will be listed as KIA._

He watched the blond bound out of his office, trailed by the Jounin and then the dark-clad boy. He warily glanced over to Team Eight, who he had inadvertently snubbed by assigning their completed mission to another team.

"May I be d-dismissed, Hokage-sama?" Hinata mustered softly when no one spoke. "Yamanaka Ino and her teammates just got back from their mission earlier and I want to tell them before..." The Hyuuga heiress trailed off, the words hanging like a looming cloud over all of them.

"I as well?" Shino's deep voice hovered from the back. "I would like to tell Team Ten. Sakura and I would run into them at the eatery frequently and I rather have them hear it from someone they know."

"You are all dismissed," Sarutobi nodded. "Four days rest."

The trio of genin bowed before clearing the premise. Kurenai sighed, weaving a hand through her raven locks. "Asuma, huh? So what kind of mission did you hand over to him this time?" she smiled wryly. Despite her efforts to put on a cheery front, her eyes were crinkled with sadness.

* * *

Pain.

That was the first thing she noticed. Aching, searing, mind-numbing, son of a mother-flipping pain.

She groaned. What on earth happened to her? Where was her medication? Unerringly, she was more concerned with the latter.

She gingerly tensed and flexed her muscles, testing her tolerance for movement before easing her limbs along the firm mattress on which she laid. She felt like she had been sleeping for days and judging by the funky odor emanating from her body, she hadn't said hello to a bar of soap in a while.

Blearily, she cracked one lid open and thanked the high heavens the lights were off. The soft glow sneaking through the curtains irritated her dry pupils as is and she reasonably surmised that this was probably what a hangover felt like.

Maybe this was a hangover.

She slowly raised onto her elbows and took a glance around the sparse room. Clean and white. Everything except for the sad looking plant haphazardly shoved in the corner. She swallowed a few times to relieve her parched throat, hemming and hawing between getting out of the bed herself or calling for assistance. She desperately wanted a form of pain relief but something tugged at the back of her mind and she clamped her mouth shut.

She slid her legs over to the side, toes barely grazing the cool linoleum as a wave a dizziness flooded her head. She steadied herself with a tight jaw. The time for rest wasn't now. She eyed the IV drip taped across her arm and picked it out roughly. What she wanted were answers.

She placed her feet flat upon the floor and gave herself an brief assessment. Was she able enough to support her own weight? She carefully leaned forward, bracing her arms along the edge of the mattress. Feeling her knees buckle, she fell back with a quiet thud.

"Oh, you're awake!"

The girl glanced up sharply, her body tensing with adrenaline and just a shiver of something else. A woman stood at the door, open-mouthed and concern written across her delicate features. She clutched at the basket in her hands.

"You shouldn't be up, you have to rest! Oh, where is that old coot!" The woman, garbed in a dark blue kimono under a matching haori, retreated silently out into the hallway and away.

The girl didn't even have a chance to pry her own lips open.

Seconds later, an older woman clad in a medical uniform, hurried in with the other woman in tow. The medic didn't even hesitate to lift her patient's legs back onto the bed.

"You need to be resting," she grumbled, unperturbed at the look of indignation shot her way. "Now tell me, how do you feel?"

"Not very good! It hurts all over!"

"Hnh." The old woman ran her hands rapidly over the patient's body, the warmth of chakra tingling against the surface of her skin as she scanned the extent of her injuries. "And your head?"

"Hurts too."

The medic grasped her head, fingers probing around the back of the skull. "My biggest concern is your concussion. You had a skull fracture."

The girl shifted back in dread but medic waved her off.

"Everything is fine now but I'm going to require that you stay for the rest of the week so we can monitor you. You'll also have to undergo a series of tests."

"Okay... I understand..."

"You also came in with a dislocated shoulder and three broken ribs. You're lucky I'm an experienced healer. It's unlikely that there will be any lasting effects from those injuries. The rest are bumps and bruises that I'm sure a young'un like you will bounce right back from."

"Oh, thank you... I really appreciate it." She fiddled with a loose thread on her hospital gown. "May I ask what happened?"

The medic and the strange woman exchanged dismayed glances, prompting the former to reach for her report. "We don't have concrete knowledge as to what may have happened to you. You were found on the outskirts of this village."

"Oh."

"It's not unusual for patients such as yourself to experience memory loss but perhaps you might recall events prior to receiving your injuries?"

She twisted her face in confusion before helpless resignation took over. "N-no, I don't."

"May I ask what your name is?"

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. "I don't know. I can't remember anything before today."


End file.
